August 2007

Breaking News

Conference Conclusions Presented to Congress

The efforts of organizers and participants in last fall’s conference, Managing Drought and Water Scarcity in Vulnerable Environments - Creating a Roadmap for Change in the United States, held September 18-20, 2006, in Longmont, Colorado, culminated in congressional testimony presented in July.  The Geological Society of America cosponsored the conference with the National Drought Mitigation Center. Several initiatives resulted, as former NDMC director Dr. Donald A. Wilhite reported in a recent letter to conference participants:

First, a week after the conference, Geological Society of America President Steve Wells, GSA Executive Director Jack Hess, Conference Technical Program Chair Don Wilhite, and South Carolina State Climatologist Hope Mizzell briefed the Congressional Hazards Caucus on September 27, 2006, presenting preliminary findings of the Drought Conference. Those presentations are available online at http://www.hazardscaucus.org/briefings/drought_briefing0707.html
Subsequently, the executive committee went to work compiling the observations and comments from the meeting into the Roadmap document and developing an accompanying fact sheet.  The recommendations made in the Roadmap and fact sheet are summarized below.  The Roadmap document: "Managing Drought: A Roadmap for Change in the United States" is available on the GSA web site at http://geosociety.org/meetings/06drought/roadmap.pdf. The fact sheet is also available on the GSA web site at http://geosociety.org/meetings/06drought/factsheet.pdf

The findings contained in the Roadmap document and summarized in the fact sheet were presented in briefings sponsored by the GSA to the Congressional Hazards Caucus on July 18, 2007.  Those briefings were moderated by Gene Whitney, Assistant Director for Environment, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  Jack Hess made introductory remarks describing the need for better approaches to managing drought.  Don Wilhite presented the findings of the Conference.  David Witter, Director of Environmental Compliance and Water Policy, El Dorado Water District, California, described how the El Dorado Water District has developed and implemented drought management planning into its operations.  There were many thoughtful questions from staffers attending both Senate and House briefings covering a wide range of drought-related issues from saline ground-water intrusion to the contribution of ground-water in drought planning.  The power point presentations as well as some photos of the briefing are available on the Hazards Caucus Alliance web site at http://www.hazardscaucus.org/briefings/drought_briefing0707.html

The creation of the documents and the Congressional Hazards Caucus briefings are not end points, but do reflect some progress in this endeavor to create a more effective drought management paradigm for the United States. Your contributions of time and ideas to this effort are significant and of lasting value. We hope that together we can continue to build on the momentum created over the last year to put those ideas into practice. Again, thank you very much for your contributions!